On YouTube and Copyrights.

Yeah, yeah, I know I’ve talked about this subject before, but it still pisses me off. And here is where I will vent my thoughts on this topic.

So. Everyone seems to know by now that YouTube’s copyright system is a little flawed. Anyone can just file a copyright complaint with YouTube and they will take the video down without even watching it first. It’s a system run by bots, not by real people, and many of us reviewers have been victims of it, most recently myself.

The first review taken down was of Daft Punk’s Interstella 5555 earlier this year, a movie that I actually gave a positive rating. It was finally put back up around a month ago:


More recently, my list of the Top 10 Surprising One Hit Wonders was also called on, because apparently YouTube expects me to talk about a bunch of songs without using any of those songs.


But just today, I found out that Hasbro called a copyright claim on my review of My Little Pony: Equestria Girls. Now for those who saw that review before it was taken down, you may know I gave that quite a negative review. And Hasbro has given their input by claiming it violated copyright, even though—after having looked it up—my review falls under fair use.


Unfortunately, while YouTube uploaders can appeal for fair use, most of the time they are unable to make any progress because, again, bots are in control of this instead of real people, and these bots never check before they take the video down to see if it’s actually violating copyright. So even if something qualifies as fair use, any random schmuck can report it and have it taken down because they don’t like it. Well, you know what, Hasbro? If you don’t want people talking crap about your bad movie, then don’t release a bad movie for people to talk crap about.

And you know how I know that nobody ever checks on stuff? Some of my own, original music videos haven’t been monetized because someone has claimed copyright on them. Think about that for a second. Original songs, that I have proof that I wrote, have been questioned because some jackasses don’t believe that I could have written them.


And I’m not the only one this is happening to. One of my favorite online reviews, Brad Jones (a.k.a. the Cinema Snob) recently uploaded a video which consisted entirely of him and a friend talking about a recent movie, using no copyrighted footage from said movie, and it was still taken down. It was finally returned, but he’s still faced copyright issues since then.


I’ve registered for an account at Vimeo and have started uploading my videos there. Problem is, my reviews are too big to be uploaded, and I would have to pay to upload them.

So if any of you have any tips for where to upload my stuff, how to deal with copyright policy, etc., feel free to tell me in the comments below.

~TheHappySpaceman